


Moirae

by iloveyourscratchybeard



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Early MSR, Episode: s01e08 Ice, Episode: s01e13 Beyond the Sea, Episode: s01e20 Darkness Falls, Episode: s01e24 The Erlenmeyer Flask, Episode: s02e01 Little Green Men, Episode: s02e05 Duane Barry, Episode: s02e07 3, Episode: s02e08 One Breath, Episode: s02e10 Red Museum, Episode: s02e13 Irresistible (X-Files), Episode: s02e16 Colony, Episode: s02e17 End Game, Episode: s03e01 The Blessing Way, Episode: s03e02 Paper Clip, F/M, First Time, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-08-19 09:34:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyourscratchybeard/pseuds/iloveyourscratchybeard
Summary: Prompt (how would it play out if Mulder and Scully started sleeping together in season one) turned into a full series. May continue through the series as long as I'm inspired, keeping their affair in line with canon. Ongoing WIP. Thanks for reading and commenting!





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The way he grabs her excites something deep within her. Rough and then tender. His hands kneading into the tense muscles of her neck. He is just checking for signs of infection, nothing more she thinks, but her body still responds to his touch all the same."

It wasn't meant to happen this way. Emotions were running high. Scully thought she had lost him to a prehistoric worm in an icy hellhole. She thought they were both going to die that way, their bodies burned down in quarantine procedures that would leave their families with no one to bury. 

 

"I want to trust you." 

"Okay, but now they're not here."

 

Scully was running out of hope. Mulder’s body was new to her as she explored his warm muscles with her hands. It felt taboo to touch him this way. He was all heat and electricity. It would be a shame if they die here and she never gets another opportunity to touch him. 

The way he grabs her excites something deep within her. Rough and then tender. His hands kneading into the tense muscles of her neck. He is just checking for signs of infection, nothing more she thinks, but her body still responds to his touch all the same. He leans his face closer, his breath on her neck, hot and forbidden. She hums a little, leans back. His hands slide down her back slowly, come to rest on her hip bones. 

"You're okay," Mulder whispers into her ear. His voice floods her with wetness. Her inhibitions have gone out the window. They might die here and she just wants. There is no logical thinking taking place tonight. Dana Scully, the rational doctor, checks out and she just becomes a woman who needs to be touched before she faces the possibility of death. She bites her lip and then pushes her ass back just a little. He is hard. She wasn't imagining it. His hands slowly slip around from her hips to her stomach. Scully reaches to unbutton the top few buttons of her plaid overshirt and he gets the message and grabs at the bottom two with haste. Mulder’s mouth leans in and touches the side of her neck - not quite a kiss - more of a test to make sure he is reading her signals right. 

And then it's a blur as she throws her plaid shirt off of her shoulders and spins in his arms all at once - meeting his lips with hers. Frantic, wild, feral. She's touching him everywhere and his hand is sliding down the front of her pants. He now knows what he does to her. His fingers slip through her curls, his middle finger spreading her open, and it's been so long since a hand other than her own has been there. Scully is unraveled. 

She's vaguely aware that the door could slide open at any moment and it makes the whole experience just a little more exciting and dangerous. This is not like her. She lets him yank their pants down and hoist her up so that the wood paneling is threatening to splinter her back as he circles his dick around her opening. She can't wait any longer. "Now!" and Mulder pushes against and through her all at once. She's never felt more full in her life. His hand is still there, dancing his fingers around her clit as he thrashes into her and she's spasming around his cock in seconds - all the pent-up frustration running through her as he fills her body.

 

They don't talk. They clean up and quickly put their clothes back in order. They survive. And they never speak about what happened.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes it comes back to her in the middle of the night. Mulder's fingertips blazing fire between her legs, his mouth leaving a slippery trail down her neck. The sound he makes as he is coming undone… She usually wakes with a start, dripping in every sense of the word and heart clapping in her body. She scolds herself each time for the memory.

Scully's father is dead. He was there and then he was gone. There was no preparation, no profound parting words of wisdom or sweet utterances that she longed to hear from him. A silent apparition mocks her and she questions all of her beliefs. Mulder’s tender with her. Calls her by her given name and cups her cheek. He watches out for her and ends up bleeding in a cold warehouse. She wonders what it’s all for - what the purpose behind anything is anymore. The rules she makes up for herself only lead her to feel so isolated and alone.

He calls her that night. Asks if he can come over and bring her dinner. She agrees.

He’s holding a lasagna and flowers of condolences. He smells familiar. She wants to forget. She lets him unbutton her blouse in the kitchen. Thread his fingers through her hair. “I’ve missed you so much, Dana.” She won’t kiss him on the mouth, so she sucks on his Adam’s apple instead. Removes his shirt. Walks her fingers down his chest, gives his penis a tight squeeze with the palm of her hand. He removes the rest of their clothing, asks her if she wants to go to the bedroom.

“No.” She turns around and puts her hands palms down on the kitchen table. She glances back at him and brings a knee up to rest on the table, presenting herself to him. He looks stunned, but steps up to her and takes a firm hold on her ass before sinking himself inside her. She closes her eyes and she can smell the musty closet in Alaska, the chill and fear in her bones over-ridden with the passion of their love-making. His face in her hair, his eyes dark and agonizing.

“Harder,” she gulps, wanting him to pound all of the emotions out of her. He complies and she starts to feel a buzzing in her belly. It’s good and it replaces her sadness. She wants to be filled up so she doesn’t feel so empty. She grips the table harder as he increases his speed. He’s grunting and she knows that means he is close. She brings one of her hands down to her clit to give herself the extra stimulation that she needs but before she can find the right tempo, she hears his startled cry from across the room.

“God. Jesus - I’m…” She looks up into Mulder’s open-mouthed stare. She brings her hands up to cover her naked breasts and it takes him a second to spin around. From behind her, Ethan has already pulled out and is frantically pulling his pants back on. “What the hell, Dana? Why is there a random guy helping himself to your apartment?!”

Scully redresses as quickly as she can, cheeks on fire and stomach filled with acid. “Mulder, what are you doing here?” she directs to the man awkwardly shifting from side to side by the front door.

“Mulder?? _This_ is the guy?” Ethan says with disbelief.

“I should go,” Mulder says over his shoulder. Scully starts to approach him and he drops a bag at his feet and leaves without turning around.

“Ethan, I’m sorry. This was a mistake,” Scully says quickly, and then runs out of her apartment to try and catch Mulder.

He’s already at his car fiddling with his keys when she reaches him. “Mulder? What were you thinking just barging into my apartment like that?”

He can’t look up at her face. “I thought you were at your mother’s. I was dropping off that field report for your signature and I picked you up some muffins from that bakery down the street.” He cautiously meets her eyes. “You’ve seemed really tired lately and I thought maybe if you ate something for breakfast-” He stops and shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have just let myself in without knocking. I know we exchanged keys for emergencies only. I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Mulder’s in his car and driving away before she can even formulate a response.


	3. Chapter 3

Ethan doesn't call again, but another former lover surfaces.  Bound in place, she's forced to watch him die. His watch stops at 6:47.

Living in the city, Scully forgets how dark the forest actually is. There are secrets in the shadows, and not enough fuel for the generator. Mulder presses his body close to hers, keeping her calm. A savior in a jeep only gets them so far. They almost die again.

Scully knows he's been watching out for her, keeping vigil by her bedside. Her skin feels sandpaper raw, but her fluids are back in check. They are spending their last night at High Containment Facility number 2 before their release. Mulder knocks softly on her private room door, just as he has every night for the last week, and then lets himself in. As a doctor, Scully has always found it difficult to accept help from others. But over the last few nights, she has allowed Mulder to check in on her. She finds comfort in this new routine.  
  
"Get any sleep today?" he asks, grabbing the antibiotic cream from her bedside table and joining her on the bed.  
  
"Barely. I just want to take a hot bath and I know it will be a while before I get to enjoy one again," she pouts.  
  
He moves behind her, opening the tub of cream and starts at her neck, smoothing it gently over her healing 2nd-degree burns. "Naw, you're healing pretty fast, doc. I'd say another few weeks and you'll be back in tip-top shape."  
  
Scully's been working up the confidence to bring Ethan up for weeks. She doesn't know why she feels the need to explain herself. They aren't a couple - he has no claim over her, and yet...she needs him to know.  
  
"We aren't together, you know." Scully forces out.  
  
He stops applying the cream to her neck and she shifts to face him. "I mean, we were, but we broke up around the time I got assigned to work on the x-files. We weren't in a great place at the time and the sudden secrecy over my work put a bigger strain on our relationship."  
  
"Oh." He takes her hand and places it on his knee. Takes another dollop of cream and starts rubbing gentle circles over the deep pink marks on top of it.  
  
"He works for the news station. He's always asking questions. It just became all too much. So I broke it off."  
  
Mulder moves to take her other hand. "Yeah, that's what it looked like," he says dryly.  
  
"It was a mistake. I was grieving and I just felt so lost..."  
  
He finishes with her hands and looks up at her face. "It's really none of my business, Scully. I shouldn't have been there like that."  
  
"No- I wanted you there." She bites her lip. That didn't come out right. "I mean, it wasn't - him - I was wanting." He meets her eyes and the current in the room buzzes. He reaches out to cup her face, and she thinks he may kiss her. And then he gently dots the remaining burns on her face with the ointment.  
  
"You've been through a lot lately. It's understandable."  
  
She looks down at her splotchy hands, feeling more vulnerable and bare to him now than she had that night. What is she even saying? She knows that night was a mistake. Ethan was somebody she used to love, used to think she could spend her whole life with. And then he was there and he wanted her. She just felt so numb; she wanted to feel something other than the pain. He used to make her happy.  
  
But that was before a certain Fox Mulder came into her life and turned her world inside out. She’s felt more alive in the last 6 months than she had in her 29 years. There was something dangerous about Mulder, an air of mystery; he was a dark wizard casting all of her emotions out of the precise order that she kept them in. She worried she was coming apart, but maybe, she was finally coming to life.  
  
He rises from the bed, hesitates for a moment, and then leans down and kisses her forehead tenderly. She wants to reach out for him; she craves his touch; feeds off of his passion...but she holds herself back.  
  
“Good night, Scully.” He walks to the door.  
  
“Good night, Mulder.” And she’s alone.


	4. Chapter 4

They can't seem to catch a break. Mulder feels the truth just outside of his fingertip grasp; he sees the cloak of lies and smells the gunpowder wafting over it. There was purity control and tanks of hybrids. He feels the remnants of toxic fumes in his lungs when he inhales. A father figure was buried in cold earth and he wasn't even allowed to grieve. But it could have been Scully. How it would have killed him had if been her...  
  
The whole time he was tied up in that dusty attic, he thought of her. He was in and out of consciousness so much he sometimes forgot where he was. He goes back to that storage room in Alaska, using his body weight to hold her against the wall. Thrusting quickly into her depths and wondering what the hell he is doing but not caring because it feels too damn good.  
  
Then he’s back in her apartment, only this time he doesn't make his presence known. He watches her bend over that kitchen table, sees her fully naked for the first time - breasts bouncing lightly and ass pushing back. He praises God for his photographic memory. He wants to watch her get fucked. He wants to see her face contort into anguish and then satisfaction at her release. He wants that boyfriend of hers to flip her over onto the table, take her ankles in his hands and fuck her some more. In his fantasy, Mulder walks over to them, pushes Ethan out of the way, and fucks her himself.  
  
It rained for three days straight while he was in the hospital. It seemed there was no end to the torrential downpour. When Scully brings him home from the hospital, there is something different about her. A tremble to her normally controlled veneer. She fumbles around his apartment nervously, gets him settled on his couch. Tells him she threw out the orange juice in his fridge that was two months past the expiration date and bought him some new groceries.  
  
Mulder grabs her hand as she paces in front of the couch, rearranging his blanket and glass of water for the third time. "Scully, I'm okay."  
  
Her lip trembles a little. "I thought for sure they were going to kill you." She won't look at him. Thunder cracks outside his window.  
  
"Hey-" he takes her other hand and turns her so she is facing him. There are tears in her eyes threatening to spill over. "Scully-"  
  
She makes eye contact with him and that is all it takes. The tears are spilling over her lashes as he pulls her down onto his lap. He's wiping them away with his thumbs, trying to catch each one as they fall. She smells like wet eucalyptus and spicy chai tea.  
  
"You saved me. You risked your own life and you saved me."  
  
"Deep Throat saved you. I just followed his instructions. And he was murdered for it." Scully shakes her head. "I questioned his motivation, but he's the reason you're still alive." She's shaking so badly; Mulder brings his arms around her small frame to warm her and calm her adrenaline. She's tense at first but as his hands run up and down her back, scratching lightly, he feels all of that melting away. She brings her arms in front of her and places her hands on his chest, one directly over his heart so the steady thrumming of it bounces into her palm. It's something so small, the heart. Cycling blood throughout the body to keep it going, yet it would take something even smaller - a single bullet - to put an end to it all. A single bullet was all it took to end Deep Throat's life. 70 years of life and learning and experiences and memories and blood and tissue and....what? One tiny thing sends it all crashing down. If Scully had made the exchange instead, it would have been her body bleeding out on the cold asphalt of that bridge just outside of Bethesda.  
  
"He may be the reason you're still alive, too," Mulder chokes out. "I could have lost you, and I -" He chokes on his next words. Mulder bites his lip and reaches up to brush a strand of hair back from her forehead. Her eyes are so blue, he thinks. He's close enough to her face that the glow from the fish tank is casting little flecks of green into them, making them looks like tide pools in the summer. Her breath is tickling his upper lip. Without any coherent thought, he's getting closer to her face, her lips...  
  
A blinding flash of light and a loud clap of thunder cause Scully to jump slightly.  
  
"It's getting really bad out there. I'd feel a lot better if you just stayed here tonight."  
  
She looks like she wants to argue, but then smiles slightly and nods in agreement. She looks around his sparse living room and chuckles. "There aren't a lot of sleeping options around here. Do you even own a bed, Mulder?"  
  
He chuckles. "It makes a really good shelf to hold all of my extra files in that storage room over there."  
  
"So you DO have a bedroom then," Scully smirks. "I guess a long-standing curiosity has just been satisfied."  
  
The fact that Scully has spent any amount of time considering whether he had a bedroom is not lost on him.  
  
***  
  
A few cans of soup later, and Scully is lounging next to him on his couch wearing a thin Oxford University t-shirt and a pair of his plaid boxer shorts as pjs. She has her third beer in hand and is chuckling to something that Paul Reiser said as "Mad About You" plays on his TV. Mulder's not paying attention to the show, she is distracting him too much with her cute little half ponytail that bounces a little every time she giggles. He rarely gets to see this version of Scully. She seems younger, carefree, and more easy-going. Flirty, even.

The rain is coming down in heavy layers outside and he grabs a blanket from the back of his couch and puts it over her lap. She doesn’t take her eyes off the TV, but scoots a little closer to him and spreads it over her legs and then leans over and covers his legs as well. Her knee rests atop his thigh as she sits cross-legged on the worn leather of his couch. It’s harder to watch her covertly with her body this close. It’s harder to maintain even breathing as well. She is wearing his clothes with his laundry detergent, but her Scully-ness is still filling his nose. The freesia of her shampoo, the mint of her chapstick. She wore her hair like that in Alaska, too. ‘Don’t think about that while she’s right beside you’ he curses himself for the desire boiling up inside his abdomen. He set boundaries for himself the day she walked into his office, all false bravado, new agent green and inconspicuously beautiful. He set the boundaries even higher when she stood in front of him in little cotton panties and he knelt down behind her and inhaled her scent. The careless id in him had wanted to toss her onto the bed and lap her up until she was thrashing around and moaning to her God, and he steeled himself for the amount of self-control he would have to maintain, working beside someone who turned him on in a way that was completely different from the type of woman he was usually attracted to. She turned on his mind as an extremely brilliant counter to his unconventional thinking and wild rebellious ways.

All his thoughts come to a standstill as another synchrony of lighting and thunder rumble through his apartment, and there is a pop- followed by total darkness. Her hand on his thigh as a reflex. “Storm knocked the power out. Happens a lot in this old building,” he reassures her.

She doesn’t say anything. He starts to move and she holds him in place with her hand. “I’m just going to get some candles.”

He feels her shake her head no.

The power must be out beyond his building because there are no street lights or glow from the city to light up his apartment. There is no moon, just the occasional flash of lighting like a strobe in his apartment, giving him a stop-motion animation view of her face.

With the lack of sight, his other senses kick into overdrive. Her hand has moved up his thigh and is grazing up his arm to his bicep. His nerve endings are purring at the touch, sending goosebumps up his spine.

And then she’s climbing back up into his lap and kissing him. He tastes the malt and barley on the tip of her tongue and suddenly the chill in the room is gone as he throws the blanket aside and clutches onto her back, pressing her into his chest. God, she’s not even wearing a bra under his shirt, and his dick leaps at this discovery. Things were so rushed in Alaska, he never even removed her tank top but this time he was going to be sure to worship every inch of her that he could lay his hands on.

She yelps in surprise as he flips her underneath him and presses her body into the cushions of the couch with his body. He takes his Oxford shirt back and is reverently kissing everywhere his mouth can reach, licking the hollow of her collarbone and then down to her breasts that he has only previously seen from afar.

Her hands are in his hair and she’s arching her back up, encouraging him on as he takes first one breast and then the next into his mouth, flicking his tongue at each nipple, biting gently.

His hand trails up the inside of her thigh slowly, all the way up under the boxers she is wearing until he reaches her heat and then he uses his index finger to lift the seam of her underwear, following the leg opening all the way around her thigh. His tongue follows a path down her navel and when he reaches her waistband, he brings both hands up to take the shorts and her panties down ever so slowly...

He removes his own shirt quickly before settling himself between her quivering legs. A flash of lighting just then and he sees her eyes - wide and darkened with arousal. He lowers his head and peppers kisses along the inside of each thigh before using the very tip of his tongue to draw a straight line along her slit.

"Mul-der..." she whispers and all at once he takes two fingers and pushes them all the way inside. Scully grinds her feet into the couch in surprise and then yelps a little as his tongue makes contact with her clit, circling around and around. She tastes better than he ever imagined she would, in those late nights when he fantasized about taking her in that hotel in Oregon.

"God, Mulderrrr..." He feels such satisfaction in pleasing her this way. Ethan probably never went down on her like this, he thinks. He twists his fingers up inside her, finding that secret spot and knows he has it when she locks her legs a little tighter and squeaks. He flattens his tongue over her clit, and pushes into it, moaning a bit to send vibrations through her body.

She's breathing hard, panting and thrashing a bit from side to side. He thinks she must be getting closer, so he wraps his lips fully around her clit and sucks it into his mouth, cracking her open like a seed, and she's coming hard, gushing around his fingers. God damn. She is dripping into his palm.

Scully is still trembling as he slowly pulls his fingers out of her and kisses his way back up her body. He’s planning on giving her a few minutes to recover, so she surprises him when she roughly grabs his head and kisses him fiercely, sucking his tongue into her mouth, her come still dripping off his chin. Her hands are working at the waistband of his sweats, tugging them down as far as her arms can reach. It’s his turn to moan as she takes his cock into her hand firmly and squeezes.

The lightning continues to flash and he feels like he is in a drugged stupor, seeing glimpses of her face in the grips of passion, feeling her small hand using his dick to circle her clit slowly before bringing it down to her opening, and then bringing her legs around his body, and locking her ankles together over his ass as he pushes into her with agonizing slowness.

He thrusts with even languidness, weight on his elbows, hands on either side of her head. He watches her face so when the lightning illuminates the room he can see her eyes. They are so full, unblinking. Scully reaches her hand up and places two fingers on his lips. He opens his mouth and sucks on the tips of them, gently, mimicking the earlier movements of his tongue onto her fingertips. This causes her to clench tightly around his cock and he knows he can’t hold out much longer.

“Touch yourself, Scully. I want to see you come again.”

She brings her other hand down between them, hears her quickening gasps, and that's it for him- he's erupting into her along with the perfectly timed thunder that seems to shake his apartment apart.

"Jesus- Mulder!" As the sky lights up he sees her head thrown back,  her eyes misted over as she quakes around him.

After a few moments of catching his breath, Mulder rolls them on their side, still inside of her, and gathers her body to his chest, pulling the blanket back over their bodies. Their hearts are pounding in crescendo with the storm outside, and for now, he feels like everything might be okay.


	5. Chapter 5

10 days later, Fox Mulder was eating his words. He left Skinner’s office in a fury, slamming the door behind him as he left. His hands clenched into fists as he stormed the hallway to the elevator that may take him to his basement office for the last time. They were closing down the X-files. Word came from the executive branch and Skinner was just the messenger, claiming to not know the official reasoning beyond Scully’s unlawful entry into a high containment facility and the execution of a high ranking official that they believe was connected to the case. ‘Out of line and insubordinate’ came up frequently.

He knew something was amiss the second he stepped out of the elevator into the basement. The stench filled the back of his throat with a putrid taste. He rounded the corner into his office to see the smoking man sitting at his desk. “Nice place you have down here, Agent Mulder.” He takes a final puff from his cigarette and stands to put it out in the metal trash can by the desk.

“What business do you have down here?” Mulder asks. He’s seen this man plenty of times in Skinner’s office, and while he doesn’t know his official role at the FBI, but he feels like he knows him from somewhere and his presence makes his stomach lurch in repugnance.

“Oh, I come down here every now and again...keeping watch on things. I keep an even closer eye on the agents within this department. Agent Scully has been engaging in some - risky behavior lately, wouldn’t you agree?”

Mulder isn’t sure the extent or implication of his statement but feels sick to his stomach nonetheless.

The smoking man steps up closer to Mulder, reaching to brush a piece of lint off of his shoulder. “Seems that any association with you brings negative consequences these days.”

“What the hell are you trying to say?” Mulder knows a threat when he hears one.

The smoking man smirks. “An associate of mine is dead. That very well could have been Agent Scully. She might be wise to take this new reassignment of yours seriously.”

“Did you have something to do with that? What do know about his murder?”

“Awfully presumptuous of you to think I have that kind of reach, Agent Mulder. It takes a wise man to know when to forfeit his hand because the game is over.” He pulls a new cigarette from the pack in his coat pocket and turns the corner of his lip up to accept it. “Your turn is up, and I suggest you make Agent Scully painfully aware of this as well.”

And like the grim reaper himself, he escapes in the sea of darkness down the hall, leaving a fetid billow in his wake.

***

He grapples with calling her all evening, the words of that smoking son of a bitch still reverberating in his ears. He caves finally, still feeling shelled out. She is stunned.

"What are you gonna do?" She asks.

"I'm - not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there." He hangs up then because hearing her voice is just too much. He really doesn't know what options lay in front of him.

***

On Monday he's called into Skinner's office first thing. The remaining boxes of his things have been moved to the third floor among all the new recruits, where he will be doing wiretapping duty for the next few months until they can decide on a more permanent assignment for him. He asks about Scully.

"Agent Scully will be teaching and working mainly out of Quantico," Skinner replies gruffly. "That will be all, Agent Mulder."

His new workspace is far more depressing than the basement. He's given a desk in a sea of green new agents - blending into the chatter of the agent pool, but he is confined to spend most of his day in a small storage closet of an office; a dark space with no windows and the smell of mothballs hanging in the air.  As if there were any more demeaning a place to stick the FBI's most unwanted - they actually found it. To make matters worse, he spends his days having his ears assaulted with the scum of the earth. Boring, mundane wiretaps of bank fraud and drug deals that were an absolute waste of time for an agent of his expertise. It was clearly a punishment.

Scully rarely graced the FBI building, spending most of her time in Quantico. One particular morning he did see her in the main hall, and his heart thudded in his chest both remembering the night they spent together on his couch and the shadow and emanation of smoke he had seen that morning in the parking garage as he exited his car. A reminder of a threat that he won’t soon forget… that they were still being closely watched. He pretended not to see her, his heart wanting to reach out and take hold of her, but his eyes holding steady straight ahead, driving himself as far from her as he could get.

Scully called him daily and he always let his answering machine pick up. He was scared for her and just couldn't risk putting her in any more danger. She showed up at his place one evening. She knocked repeatedly and called his name while he sat with the TV muted, willing her to go away and praying that she wouldn't use her key. She didn't, and he felt relief and disappoint flood over him all at once. He pressed himself back into the couch where he held her naked body all night just weeks earlier and pressed his eyelids shut, forcing the memory from his mind.

***

A midnight meeting with the senator and a promise of contact sends him south to the humid jungle. Here in the quiet, he can’t escape his thoughts as he flashes between memories of Scully- wide eyes, ivory skin, a dust of golden stars sprinkled across her royal nose. He talks to her to calm his racing mind.

“Before, I could only trust myself. Now I can only trust you. They’ve taken you away from me.”

Untranscribable messages, a continuous strobe of red, and the ghost of a sister echoing his name in his head. The sweat was misted over his skin and the air was thick with damp intensity. Something was happening, some intangible truth dangling midair, maybe the answers to all of his life’s questions.  
  
Mulder blacks out and then her hands are on him and he’s sure he’s still dreaming. Everything is here, the proof he’s always wanted on the tape and the transmissions, a victim of an alien encounter, and her… And like everything else in his life, it is gone just as fast as it appeared. The retrieval team is on their heels as they flee in desperation.  
  
A Broncho is hard to disguise but they find a place in thick brush behind a sugar cane farm. Their hearts are bursting in their chests as they’ve narrowly escaped death yet again. Mulder is numbed out from the blur of the past 48 hours. He feels her hand on his thigh, her voice calling out his name. Before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s pulling her onto his lap in the driver’s seat, kissing her with a combustible energy that can’t be defined. She smells so good, feels too real under the palms of his hands. She fills all of his senses and he wonders how he briefly considered walking away from her. He laps at her neck like a hungry kitten, clutches her ass tightly to him like a lifeboat.  
  
Their clothes are quickly abandoned and she rocks over him. He is fully sheathed in her, copper light filtering through her hair around his face, broken moans and murmurs drifting from her plump lips; he feels suspended in dream-like bliss.  
  
His release is insuppressible, her nails dig half-moons into his bare shoulders and she cries out with him. Their fluids mix together in a tacky mess over his lap but he presses her body flush to his.  
  
“How did you find me?” he manages into the junction of her shoulder.  
  
“George Hale.”  
  
His fingertips trace patterns, poems, and promises along the bridge of her shoulder blades, delicate whispers to accompany a vow.  
  
“They think they can take it all away. They think they can erase it, Scully… but I won’t let them. Not this time.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

He sits in the shadows, out in the cold, and it's a comfort to him. It's where he belongs, where he feels important. His time is coming, he knows it is. He was tired of being unremarkable, of blending in with the other pretty boys, getting average grades at an average school. Had he continued on that path with his peers, he would have found a wife, settled down and continued to live that subpar life with a mortgage and a desk job and no notoriety to speak of beyond being the employee of the month and perhaps getting a 2% raise at the end of the year. Alex Krycek was built for more than that. He was going to show them. If only his larger than life father could see him now, he'd think twice before slapping him in the face and telling him he was worthless. "пошёл ты в баню to you, too, Pops."

Mulder is over at her place tonight. He follows the building around to the bay window of her living room. He watches the figures inside through the slats in the blinds with a delicious thrill. Look at the way Mulder presses her body into the couch, his chiseled ass flickering golden with the light of the fireplace. He's pumping her with languid ease, taking his time. Her hands are wrapped around his biceps and she watches his face with such an earnest display of affection. There is something about the way they are locking eyes with one another. This is more than just a good fuck - and Krycek knows a good fuck. But he doesn't know this...a connection that takes a presence of its own and fills the room. She wraps her legs around his waist, arches her back up, her breasts now unknowingly exposed to Krycek as her unbuttoned shirt falls open further to her sides. Mulder dips his head down to taste them, one at a time, and Krycek can hear her moan faintly through the double panes of glass. Suddenly he changes positions, lifting up onto his heels and taking her calves in his hands, spreading her legs wide as he thrusts into her. His muscular thighs are flexing with his quickening movements and Krycek feels anticipation building in his own scrotum as he watches. Once, twice, three times and he sees Mulder’s ass muscles clench as he lets out a strangled cry and collapses forward, his head coming to rest in the softness of her breasts. This is the point where Alex would button up and run, but they just lie there together. Her hands busy themselves with drawing circles in his scalp and they close their eyes against the glow of the flame.

***

His position as Mulder's new partner earns him certain liberties to learn more about his mark. He thinks if he wasn't assigned to destroy his life, he would ultimately like the guy. There is a dark neuroticism to him that intrigues Alex. He works hard to try to earn his trust, to be the open mind that he thinks Mulder is looking for. And yet, he knows Mulder still doesn't trust him. He finds himself jealous of Scully, of the easy camaraderie they share. Mulder is still bringing her into their cases, using her as his confidant and sounding board.

He’s ordered to tail Scully. The smoking man feels she is Mulder’s greatest weakness, and Krycek can’t help but feel that it’s more than just keeping Mulder from discovering the truth, that it’s a personal vendetta to break Mulder’s spirit.

She spends a lot of time in the morgue between her classes and autopsies. She goes to church on Sundays and has lunch with her mom and sister afterward. She reads long novels in the bath and sneaks bits of dark chocolate late at night. She sings flat tunes in the kitchen when she's making dinner, and she does the crosswords in her fluffy robe, her feet propped up on Mulder’s lap, and she fucks him with such an honest reverence that Krycek wonders if that is what it must be to be in love.

The Duane Barry case takes them out of town and once again, Krycek is sick of being kicked around and underutilized. He wants so badly to be acknowledged that he almost forgets that succeeding at the FBI is not his main gig. He takes his frustration out on Duane Barry, subtly setting Mulder up to take the blame. Everything is falling in line and he knows he will be rewarded for his loyalty soon enough. He only feels mildly bad for what is about to take place. After all, he is mostly unaware of what insidious plans his smoking overseer has in store for Mulder and Scully. He won't be to blame for whatever mishaps befall them. He is just following orders. He will miss watching them though.

***

The fluorescent lights of the supermarket are too bright for his eyes. He spends so much time in the dark. He pulls his baseball cap a bit lower to disguise his face and keeps out of her view as he pretends to read the labels of random products at the supermarket. He has been told his job tonight is very important. He needs to keep her in his sight and report her arrival home immediately.

She grabs random items without putting much thought into them, her distraction evident in the way she paces back and forth between the aisles. She appears to make up her mind about something and heads to the back section by the pharmacy. Krycek ducks down and reads the label on some cough syrup, turning just in time to see her quickly grab a box and turn toward the checkout line. He stands to follow behind her and pauses as he passes the area she was just nervously pacing in front of....pregnancy tests. 'Way to go Mulder,' he chuckles to himself. This little bit of information is really going to score him some points, he hopes. A fucking Mulder spawn, that's some good leverage.

He sees her run something over the scanner at the cash register. It starts beeping manically and she bolts quickly from the store. He follows two car lengths behind, all the way to her apartment before placing his call.

“Scully’s home.”

“Good. Good. You’ve done good work tonight, Alex. You are dismissed,” the brittle voice on the other end directs.

“You don’t need me to stay on - help with whatever you have planned next?” He needs to do more to show his value. He is more than another set of eyes. He is a great man; he will be the one in the position of power someday.

“I will let you know when your services are further needed.”

“And Agent Scully?”

“Agent Scully will no longer be an issue.” The line goes dead. Krycek sits in his car in silence.


	7. Chapter 7

Who is a person, if not the sum of their experiences, and who is it that determines the path with which life takes us? Fox Mulder believes in many things, but predetermined fate falls into that gray area. In the past few weeks, he felt that he was hanging from a very frayed end of a rope, one that perhaps could not be mended. He had read of the Moirae, the three goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man. His rope had been spun, knotted by the mistakes of his father and his mother, thinned out by the loss of his sister, and with the abduction of Scully, Atropos may very well have severed the last bit that was tethering him to this earth. He drifted with purposeless buoyancy, ready for the final axe to fall and take him down at any moment. He failed to care about much of anything any more.

 It was knowing she may be out there. Even if she were dead, he knew his new mission would be to seek revenge on those responsible with a bullet, or ten, to the head. It kept the bullets away from his own head.

 Mulder fled to the opposite side of the country to try to rid himself of the weight of her absence and it only made things worse. His lungs are heavy with smoke, his eyes burn and his throat is parched. He might as well be a vampire himself - he doesn’t sleep anymore and he can’t look in the mirror because he hates himself too much. He gave up tonight. In that house with Kristen, he was missing Scully so deeply. He was desperate for her touch, her warmth. He thought if he closed his eyes he could pretend she was with him instead, but afterward, he was only left with a sickening numbness that burns his chest where her cross hangs from his neck.

 When he arrived back in D.C., he didn’t want to go home so he went to hers instead. It was still technically a crime scene, yellow tape adorning the windows, but the evidence was collected, the nightmare preserved forever by the forensic photographers and all that was left was blood and glass. It was like someone fit together pieces from two different puzzles. If he looked past the damage, he felt her presence here. Everything was Scully. Her tea mug still sat in the sink, a set of heels discarded on their side under the coffee table, a book left open on her armchair like she was planning on picking it right up where she left off when she drifted off to sleep mid-chapter. Her overstuffed striped couch, eclectic rugs, solid wood furniture pieces, and plants arranged in a pattern of feng shui adjacent to the fireplace: it was fire, water, wood, metal, and earth all synced together in perfect harmony. Except there wasn’t harmony here…it was wrong, all wrong. Her sanctuary was inhabited and soiled by him. He brought this evil into her home. Mulder rushed to the kitchen for some rags and filled a bucket with a mixture of dish soap and vinegar. He was frantic - darting through the apartment wiping away the blood, scrubbing the carpet with a crazy fervor. He grabbed a bag from the kitchen table and went about picking up shards of glass. He would undo it. He would get her back and she won’t have to return home to this. He would make it right again.

 He doesn’t even realize he’s done it until the blood is filling his palm and he sees a shard of glass clutched in it. He can’t feel the pain from his injury, he is simply too numb. He wraps the wet rag several times around his hand and rolls into a ball on the floor- in what is most likely the last place she lied in her own home, struggling out of the grasp of Duane Barry. He clutches his knees to his chest and allows his eyes to lose focus, blurring over the objects around him and then coming into focus on the bag he was using to collect the glass. There is something inside it. He reaches in and pulls out a little blue box that forces his body to shoot upright immediately. It was a pregnancy test.

 That’s what does it. Panic rises in his chest and the dam behind his eyes finally releases and he’s crying and shaking until his lungs burn for oxygen. He never saw himself becoming a father. He had no examples to lead by. He was too damaged to be a role model for another human. But Scully - she would be amazing. She would be everything. He never considered what they had between them seriously before. He hadn’t needed to put it into words. He cares for her deeply, yes, but does he love her? It always just WAS - him and her. She was the only other person in the world who could understand what it was like to do the things they did. Did he know how to love? Mulder bites his lip and begins murmuring her name over and over again until his tears subside and he gives in to his exhaustion.

 "I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it in time, Scully. I’m so sorry for all of it.“

 He closes his eyes on the floor of her apartment where she screamed his name in broken desperation. Words that may very well have been her last. When sleep claims him, he sees children with blue eyes the color of heaven.


	8. Chapter 8

The days pass like the images of a microfiche rushing past tired eyes during an all-nighter on a case. Mulder can’t make out the words in the blur of his life. Not that he can call what he has life, really. He exists. He hasn’t even opened up any x-files since his case in California. It just doesn’t fucking matter anymore.

It takes all of the energy left in his body to lift the receiver when his phone starts ringing in the middle of the night.

“Agent Mulder?” He recognizes the stern tone of his boss immediately.

“Sir?”

“It’s about Agent Scully.” Mulder bolts upright, almost breaking the phone with the force of his grip on it. “She’s at Georgetown Medical Center. We just got word. Her mother has already been contacted.”

“Is she... how is she?”

“She was brought in as a Jane Doe and local authorities contacted us as soon as they matched her description to the APB of a missing federal agent.”

“I have to see her-” Mulder is standing, already grabbing his keys and hastily throwing on his sneakers when Skinner interrupts him.

“Mulder.” The tone sends ice down Mulder’s neck. “She is in really bad shape. She’s in a coma, and -” The always direct and steely tone in Skinner's voice breaks a little and Mulder understands.

“Thank you, Sir.” His body won't move fast enough.

***

He wants to rip their heads off. All of them- the receptionists, the nurses, the doctor... his anger turned outward is a haunting sight. Even Mrs. Scully sits there with blank fear. His partner, so strong, so willful and determined. Now just a shell of herself buried among tubes and a breathing machine keeping her body alive. What have they done to her? He needs answers. He needs to be able to assign the blame, needs to be able to do  _ something _ , because he can't feel powerless over the situation.

Dr. Daly is a kind and sympathetic man, easily forgiving Mulder for his hysterical outburst. He explains Scully’s condition as gently as possible considering there is really no right way to explain to somebody that their loved one is essentially dead. Mrs. Scully seems to have prepared for this already - as if her psychic dreams told her it was coming. The headstone was already engraved and waiting. She excuses herself to light a candle for her daughter in the chapel, leaving Mulder alone with Dr. Daly.

"I have another question. In the initial blood work..." He bites his lip hard. "Was she tested - for pregnancy?"

The doctor arches a brow at him. He looks down at his clipboard and flips back a few pages to oversee test results. "With her situation and the condition she arrived in, an SAK was performed and the pregnancy tests done at that time came back negative. We see no evidence of sexual assault."

Mulder is still holding his breath when the doctor puts a hand on his forearm, forcing him to inhale. "Was that what you were expecting?"

"I'm - not sure what I feel right now."

"I'm very sorry for what's happened to your friend, Mr. Mulder."

_ Friend _ . That was such an inadequate word for what she was to him. Would any word really fit, though? How do you describe what someone means to you when they are more valuable than your own life? He wants to scream at the doctor that she was so much more than a friend, than his partner, than his lover... possibly even the mother of his child for however brief a time. He doesn't scream though.

"Thank you."

***

Blood thickens into a syrup over the cold vinyl of the hospital basement, courtesy of a cryptic new informant that couldn’t be further from his predecessor. Mulder remembers the threats of the smoking man and points a gun at his face, tired of being a pawn in their game. He has no doubt in his mind that he is the one that orchestrated Scully’s disappearance, but he can’t pull the trigger. Even his resignation from the FBI is rejected. He feels powerless in every aspect of his life, prepared to finally go out in a miasma of gunpowder with the execution of those responsible. Reasoning comes to him in the form of another Scully, and perhaps there is more than madness to his beliefs. Perhaps there is strength in them, too, because she wakes up.

He can't wipe the stupid grin off his face when he enters a room with three Scully women and welcomes her back. His visit is brief but he can't bring himself to leave the hospital for fear that she'll disappear again. He stays in a rigid metal chair outside her room, dozing on and off. He's startled awake by a hand on his shoulder and kind eyes looking down at him.

"You need to take care of yourself, too, Fox."

He smiles. "Don't worry about me, Mrs. Scully. I feel better than I have in a very long time."

Her head nods, perceptive to the look of new love, and grateful for whatever that means for a daughter that she had thought to be burying.

"I'm leaving for the evening now. I'll bring coffee in the morning." Mrs. Scully winks and kisses the top of his head on her way out.

He slips into Scully's room quietly as she lay sleeping. The room is dark but it's the brightest place he's been in weeks. He gingerly lies beside her, careful not to wake her as his hand traces her delicate features. He kisses the bridge of her nose with his lips before settling his head aside her chest. Her belly rises and falls with her breath and Mulder ponders what spark of life may have briefly existed within her. Had she been pregnant with his child or was it just a false alarm? He resigns himself to putting it on a shelf with the other mysteries of his life. There is no use thinking about it further. Whatever trauma she had endured offset that possibility and there was no sense in bringing more pain to her by letting on what he knew. He would just be there for her. There really wasn't much more he could do.

Nightmares wake her at some point during the night. She is startled to find him in bed with her. She grips onto his arms and blinks slowly with eyes flitted with a wraithlike shroud that can only accompany one who has been at death’s door.

“Shhhhh, Scully, it’s okay. It was just a dream. You’re here. You are safe. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

Her whole body trembles as she buries her face into his chest, wracked with sobs. He palms her hair gently and whispers continued assurances. He can't begin to imagine the torment that flashes violently within her head. "I'm here. I'm here..." a mantra, a promise.  _ Always _ .

When her breathing equalizes, she pushes back, her eyes locking with his in reverence. "You're here? You're real?" He nods, brings their joined hands up to his heart. Somewhere he knows the steady tempo of a beating heart is like a sonnet to the doctor within her. "You're here. It's still beating because you're here."


	9. Chapter 9

She dives right back into work. Did he really expect anything less from her? When her father died, she used her job to help her work through her grief. It only seems proper that she does the same to cope with her own near-death.  
  
Their first case back and she’s nearly killed by volcanic spores. He picks his next case wisely, thinking small town Americana seems like a safer place to be. He takes her out on a date, a real date. He realizes they haven’t done things like this - eat a meal together and just enjoy each other’s company. He wipes barbecue sauce off her chin and when she’s mistaken for his wife, he smiles to himself.  
  
The safe case is darker than he realized and a reminder of Deep Throat’s murder brings that fear back to the forefront of Scully’s mind. For the first time since she’s been back, she comes to him at night. He’s been trying to allow her space, knowing her body and mind needed time to heal from the trauma of her abduction. She would tell him when she was ready.  
  
She uses her key to get in and he wakes from his spot on the couch but doesn’t move. She doesn’t say anything from the doorframe to his living room, toeing off her shoes and setting her keys on the side table. At the foot of the couch, she pulls her oversized sweatshirt over her head, her bare breasts catching the light from the street lamps outside. Her leggings follow, along with her underwear as she stands there watching him watch her for several moments.  
   
She comes around the couch slowly and stands beside him, taking his hand and placing it on her breast, over her heart. “I want you to touch me, Mulder.”  
  
“I didn’t want to rush you. I don’t want to hurt you.”  
  
“You won’t. You never would.”  
  
He rises to sit up, and pulls her body forward, placing a kiss directly over her bellybutton. He wraps his arms around her waist, hugging her briefly, and then pulls his head back and meets her eyes earnestly. “Show me.”  
  
She takes his right hand in hers and slowly drags it down her body, along her stomach and down into her auburn curls. She widens her stance a little and then guides his fingers over her clit, making wide circles. Her eyes close as she drops her head back, sighing deeply. She reaches for his other hand, pulls at his first two fingers and positions them at her entrance. He swirls his fingers around, gathering wetness, and then slowly slides one in, testing her. She lets out a delicious moan and he sees the muscles in her abs clench at the sensation. “More.” He brings his second finger in, and pumps her slowly with his left hand while his right continues to trace circles over her clit, harder and faster with each round, never taking his eyes off of her face.  
  
The sounds coming from her mouth set his mind in awe. He didn’t think he would see her like this again, staring at that black and white photo of her gagged in the trunk of a car, listening to her frantic message on his answering machine until he fell into a fitful sleep night after night. And now here she was, glorious and exquisite before him, coming apart in his hands, down his palms.  
  
He takes her to the bedroom for the first time. The room is still mostly boxes of old files, but he’s able to navigate around them enough to lie her down on the bed. Her naked form feels heavy and haunted beneath his hands. His tongue marks a path over the silky powder of her inner thighs and he tries to extract the darkness with his mouth, worshipping her and making amends for his faults. Her hands knead at his skull and the tiny whimpers drifting from her lips are echoes of a different time. She’s marred now, a more determined partner as she has a stake in all of this, too. She has to seek out the truth of who is responsible for her missing time.  
  
She comes again against his face, and then pulls him up over her like she needs his weight heavy on her to keep her tethered to reality. Her hands cling to his shoulders, grab painfully into the muscles of his back. “I need to feel you inside me.”  
  
When he pushes into her, it’s like a drug that he’s been craving for months. It sets all of his nerve endings on fire, all the way to his toes.  
  
“Harder. Fuck me harder, Mulder.” Her heels dig into his ass and he drives into her with adoring vigor. He isn’t deep enough for her and her eyes wordlessly beg him for more. He reaches around and takes her right calf and brings it up, presses it into her chest. The angle twists her pelvis just enough that he actually feels himself hitting her cervix. It’s all so much stimulation after a very long dry spell and he yelps and comes inside of her without warning.  
  
She stays with him that night, curled against his chest with a single strip of light filtering through the window directly over her body. It’s representative of life, he thinks, his light in all the darkness. Towers of boxes brimming with written accounts of monsters and mutants surround the sanctuary of his bed, and he clings onto her to keep himself sane as they threaten to topple over and take him out.  
   
Tonight, there are no nightmares, no dark figures behind a haze of smoke. There is her hibiscus-scented hair against his nose, her calm and even breathing equalizing his own, and Fox Mulder sleeps.


	10. Chapter 10

Scully knows too well what it feels like to be waiting to die. Hands bound, mouth silenced, the monster waits for her outside of the trunk while the lights in the sky approach. He waits in the house with a hot bath running and little shampoo bottles lined up in tidy rows.

She knows the taste of blood, the metallic bitter of iron and sweat, knows the drowning feeling of slipping into an unconsciousness and losing control over yourself. She knows all of those final prayers by heart, had the slideshow of her life play out in her head several times. She _knows_ how it feels to almost die. But she also knows what it's like to be a survivor. She won't make it easy for them. She will fight with every fiber of her being for her life. She refuses to let them win. God never lets the Devil steal the show, she had told Mulder once, and she's fairly certain that Pfaster may actually be the devil.

Until Mulder delicately lifted her chin with his fingertips and all of her emotions came flooding out, she hadn't realized how much she had been bottling up. Her life lately had been a never-ending coaster of highs and lows and the punches kept coming. She became good at grinding her teeth through them, never one to easily allow what she was feeling to bleed through. Growing up, that was Melissa. She was the one with plunging, never-ending emotions. Crying that her life was over when Bobby Jacobs dumped her at the sophomore year homecoming dance. Threatening to run away when their father grounded her for a month when he found cigarettes in her backpack. She started studying the color of people's auras when she befriended a group of girls who were known as "witches." Of course, their father disapproved and that spurred her interest further, but it seemed to Dana that that was when Melissa finally became content in her life. Among her crystals, she was infused with nature and the elements and it brought a sense of inner peace to her that Dana wholeheartedly envied. She wished that she could be that sure with her own life. Melissa always said Dana's aura were shades of blues, which are very strong and calm individuals, interlaced with some brown and tan shades, which indicate people that tend to overthink normal conundrums, and can often be perceived by others as uptight and elusive. She couldn't argue with her sister. As much as she wanted to be a free spirit, she just never could let go and allow that of herself. She always kept within these lines that she had drawn at an early age. You must do A before you can do B and then work towards C. Precise and exact measurements. Go to bed by 10 pm and wake up at 6 am. Do all of the homework and then as much extra credit as you can muster in. Be the best, and then be a little bit more...

Melissa had informed Dana over wine and some vegan take-out one night recently that Mulder's aura was magenta and red. She explained how rare of a combination that was. People with dominant magenta are a bit eccentric and constantly have the compulsion to go against the status quo. Magenta is a color symbolizing struggle but isn’t necessarily negative. It is often an indicator of artistic abilities that have yet to be realized. When it's mixed with red, it means these people are extraordinarily passionate and make the very best kind of lovers. Scully couldn't hide the blush in her cheeks and that's when Melissa became acutely aware of just how much her sister could validate that statement.

"Dana Katherine! Why haven't you told me? I want ALL the details. Spill!"

Scully had shaken her head and buried her face into her wine glass, forcing several large gulps down.

"You've been sleeping with that hot partner of yours and I'm just now finding out about it?"

"It's not like we're a couple, Missy. It was just one time at first. It just happened. And then I almost lost him again and..."

"And what?"

Scully's face dropped. "I didn't know what I would do without him."

Melissa, ever the intuitive one to her younger sister's emotions, became serious. "You're in love with him."

"I haven't really thought about it, Melissa. I've been through a lot lately."

"You are! I can see it in your face." Her sister was too damn perceptive.

"It's not like that. We rely on each other."

"Dana, you should have seen him when you were in the hospital. He was circling the drain. He was ready to kill everyone in his path to avenge what they did to you. He's in deep."

She thinks about the time before she was taken. They were spending more time together outside of the FBI since they were no longer partners. It started innocently enough, him stopping by in the evenings to get her medical opinion on some findings as a guise for just wanting to see her. It usually ended up with mind-blowing sex and falling asleep in each other's arms. They never talked about the shift in their relationship, but they both felt the drive to be together, missing the other's presence in their life.

Being with Mulder was easy. He didn't place the expectations on her that Ethan always had. They understood each other and were two like minds on opposite sides of the spectrum. The physical side of their relationship was just a bonus- a way to expel all of the energy that sparked continuously between them. She didn't overthink it. She was still on the pill from her relationship with Ethan, but with the stress of the work she had slipped and forgotten to take it a few times. Her period was weeks late before Duane Barry abducted her. If only she had been able to take the pregnancy test. It was probably for the best that she didn't because it would have just been another devastation from the unknown horrors that were done to her without her consent during those missing weeks of her life that she can't get back. To live with a question mark over your head is a terrible burden. To have to fight the devil with your bare hands and have your newly healed body battered and bruised only compounds it all.

And now, here she was, another night from hell and Mulder is the one putting her back together. Melissa's words from weeks earlier rang in her head. 'You're in love with him.' He is the brick wall with which she puts her back up against. He is the roof keeping her dry from the downpour. He is magenta with a hint of red. Fine, long bones with swimmer's muscle and brilliance encapsulated. He is a full bottom lip, strong angular nose, and pupils that reflect the dark storm of his past. He is hands on her hips, tongue spreading lips, and a thick cock filling her to the brim. He is passion and lust and sarcasm and truth. And maybe Missy isn't so off base, after all. Maybe she is in love with him.

He brings her to his motel room for the night and regulations be damned. He helps dress her in her satin pajamas, careful over her bruises, and kisses the rope burns of her wrists. He tucks her in with a tenderness and climbs into bed behind her, willing her demons away with the pressure and weight of his body wrapped tightly around her. When she closes her eyes, she sees the devil's vile stare in between flashes of white light and anonymous faces with surgical masks.

"Mulder, tell me a story."

He nuzzles his nose into the back of her hair. "Hmmm?" his baritone vibrates into her body, the ripples of it sending warm comfort where she is cold all the way through. He's quiet for a moment. She knows he is considering what to tell her, searching his mind for something that doesn't fall into the dark realm of his morning slideshow stories. Finally, a low chuckle rumbles into her neck and he places a single kiss there before clearing his throat.

"So did I ever tell you about the time that Langly tried to make waffles on a CPU?"

She doesn't hear the story, instead focusing on the even rumble of his voice, the comforting drabble reminiscent of late night phone calls that she's been drifting off to since their first case. Blanketed in the sound of his voice surrounding her like a shroud, the devil retreats back to hell, and Dana Scully falls asleep in the arms of her lover.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s a funny thing, love. It creeps up on you when it’s the last thing you are searching for. Although, if Mulder were to unleash his inner psychologist on himself, he supposes that isn’t true at all. Love is at the core of all of his searching. What was the quest to find Samantha if it wasn’t rooted in love? He longed for his parent’s love and approval well before Samantha went missing. His father worked all of the time and moved with a heaviness that Mulder now understands as having the weight of the world on your shoulders. His mother did her best, and there were good days, but he always sensed the disconnect in his family - the tension between his parents was malleable and almost took a visual form. It turned his mother into a bitter, distant shell of herself, especially after Samantha disappeared. Mulder felt responsible not only from being unable to save his sister, but for his inability to keep his whole family together. He now sees how ludicrous it is for a 12 year old child to shoulder that kind of burden, but it doesn’t keep him from continuing to be that hopeful kid, and it doesn't keep his father from continuing to make him feel small and responsible for the family turmoil.

There's a tidal wave of bizarre human clones murdered, the toxic blood boils, and he doesn't know how to react when his life's quest turns up on his father's doorstep without warning... this peculiar adult form of his baby sister with a haunted past and an axe over her head. It's as if he expected to find her, still 8 years old and begging him to play games with her. As if time ceased to exist for her when she vanished.

The exuberant release of two decades of pain doesn't come. He stands on a bridge with the two people who mean more to him than anything. The fear closes in on him, a claustrophobic net over his head as he watches the bounty hunter press the barrel of the gun against Scully’s temple. The panic in his chest closes off his airway, constricts his throat. The choice was easier than he thought it would be, Samantha moving to take the place of Scully.

The next 24 hours pass in a series of nightmares. Samantha disappears into the icy liquid of the Potomac, but it's just one of the many iterations of her. The cloning experiment goes deeper into the heart of the conspiracy and he needs to know how she became entangled into this dark world, he needs answers and he knows he can’t put Scully in jeopardy any more to get them. He leaves her without a goodbye, just an email left on his computer.

“I won’t let you jeopardize your life and your career for reasons purely personal to me. You were right, Scully- you said a line has to be drawn somewhere. I’m drawing it for you here.”

Of course, she ignored it. Her science saved him. It brought them home.

_I would find you anywhere._

She undresses him slowly, one button at a time of his worn denim shirt coming undone. Her eyes are cast downward, lashes spilling over her cheekbones. Her palms flat over the planes of his chest as she smoothes his shirt back, over his shoulder blades and down the backs of his triceps. She places a delicate kiss over his heart and nuzzles her nose into his downy chest hairs.

_I would know you anywhere._

His fingers at her waist slip under the cotton of her sweater, tickling at the curve of her hip bones. Time moves in slow motion for them. They are in no hurry, the threats at bay for now, the evening completely still around them. He grips the hem of her garment, suddenly needing skin to skin, and lifts it up over her head, casting it to the floor. Her fingers are still playing over his body, walking up the row of his abdominals, around his collarbone, up the side of his neck to his earlobes.

“No more lines between us,” Scully whispers, placing another kiss on his chest, on the two day stubble of his chin. Mulder feels his heart swelling for this woman. This woman who would take on their superiors and shadowy informants to find his location. Who would take out an emergency room of doctors to step in and save him. Who kept vigil at his bedside for days, praying for his recovery.

He feels ready to burst with emotion, and maybe it’s everything finally coming to a head - Samantha returning only to find out it wasn't her in the first place, dealing with the weight of his parents, chasing the bounty hunter to Deadhorse only to nearly die from a retrovirus, left with more questions than answers - but he feels his eyes filling to the brim and he brings his hands up to Scully’s jaw and cradles it, forcing her eyes onto his. His thumbs trace patterns over her cheeks and he bites his lip. _This woman_.

“Dana…” His own whispered prayer. She sniffles and he sees the same emotion reflecting back in her eyes. He leans in, and he presses his lips to hers. It’s gentle and tender and sweet. As he pulls back slowly, he rubs his lower lip back and forth along her top one, touches her nose to nose, forehead to forehead. He finally has the courage to say it.

“I’m in love with you.”

Her breath hitches for a moment, and then she pulls back and looks into his eyes. Her lip trembles slightly and a single tear spills over her lower lashes, marking a path down her face. He kisses it away, the salt of Scully. She turns her mouth into his and kisses him more forcefully, with the passion of her unspoken words back to him. She doesn’t say it, she doesn’t need to. He knows it.

They make love in his bed, slow and deliberate. He worships her body, his savior and truth, his healer and lifeline. It’s like the first time. They are no longer denying themselves what they mean to one another, no longer restraining against the invisible gamut of rules. No more lines.

***

Morning light comes and he wakes to the tickle of her tousled hair on his chin. She turns her face up to him and smiles. Without makeup, he can see the golden freckles highlighting her nose and cheeks, the blush of her skin making her eyes look a brighter shade of blue. She looks new and fresh for the first time in weeks. Her naked breasts are nuzzled against his bare chest, leg thrown up over his thighs so he can feel her damp heat against him.

“Woman, I am supposed to be recovering and you are keeping my heart rate at a dangerously high level.”

“Mmmm,” her hand trails up his thigh and settles on his growing erection. “I like to think of it as physical therapy. Building your strength back up.” She strokes him several times fully and he can hardly tell it’s only been hours since his last orgasm because he is suddenly painfully hard. She pulls up so she is straddling him and takes him inside in one swift movement. She looks like a goddess, head thrown back, eyes closed and early light cascading down her body. She lifts and lowers with slow purpose, like she’s savoring the most delicious dessert, enjoying every little moment of it. She angles on each downstroke so her clit bumps against him just right, and he knows now that the little crease between her brow means her orgasm is building.

“Open your eyes for me.”

She does, a small smile playing on the corner of her mouth. She licks her lips, raises and lowers. He takes her hands, intertwining their fingers, kisses the back of one hand.

“I meant what I said last night. I love you, Dana Scully.”

He feels her tighten around him as if the words alone were bringing her closer to her orgasm. And then she stills. She lowers her chest to his, kissing him deeply, exploring his mouth with her tongue, pulling back to say the words one at a time.

“I…” She kisses his lower lip. “...love...” Upper lip. “...you.” And then she raises back up and quickly picks up the tempo, their interlocked fingers squeezing tighter and tighter to mimic the walls of her cunt around him as she tenses up and explodes, screeching his name and sending him right off the ledge with her.

They fall and fall and fall… her body heaving forward over his, their heavy breathing slowing in tandem.

“I think I just lost nine minutes,” he quips, rubbing his hand up and down her back. This earns him a chuckle.

“Mmm, I worked up an appetite. Got any food around here?” She knows him too well. He is the worst at grocery shopping.

“I have bagels that I keep in the freezer.”

“Yes, but do you have any cream cheese to go with them?”

“Well if I did, I could guarantee that it would be extra fuzzy. I have butter though.”

“Butter on a bagel? Are you crazy?” She sits up and reaches for his discarded denim shirt from the night before, looking back for just a moment with a mischievous glint in her eye. “Don’t answer that."

“Well, the bagels are cinnamon raisin, and trust me - the combo is delicious.”

He smiles up at her, his very own Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. How does she make every shirt he owns look so much better?

“Two _buttery_ cinnamon raisin bagels, coming right up.” She saunters out of the room with a playful glance back at him.

Listening to the domestic patter of a barefoot Scully preparing breakfast in his kitchen, he lays back against the pillows and revels at the scent of her in his bed. Instead of feeling exhausted and broken down from recent events, Mulder feels an optimistic flutter in his belly. Love is a funny thing, indeed.


	12. Chapter 12

Mulder comes to her in her dreams again, but this time they feel more like nightmares. He’s there and it feels like she should be able to touch him, but then she wakes in a cold sweat and she’s alone. Everyone thinks he’s dead, but she knows that if he were, she would feel it. She would know.  
  
In the sacred hogan of the Navajo kingdom, Mulder drifted through time and space, uncertain of what was real until his mind settled on images of her, of them together. Scully was always absolute in his mind. A grounding force and strength from which he would draw upon. In the same way that she sensed he was alive and would return to her, he had a knowledge that she needed his help. Like a shining knight he appeared at exactly the right time, gun drawn, and ready to defend her honor - not that she needed a man-at-arms, his fighting warrior. If anything, it was her that saved him time and time again by simply existing. He never knew he could love with such ferocity.  
  
He slams the stop button on the elevator as soon as the doors close and it begins its descent. Her lips are on his instantly, her mind working in tandem with his and knowing exactly what he needs because it’s what she needs as well. The adrenaline from their face-off with Skinner is pumping through their veins. The thrill of breathing in her scent, tasting the tang of her sweat as his tongue travels from her earlobe down to her collarbone. They are frantic in their rejoining as if the other might slip away… afraid to let go for a moment, to even pause for oxygen. He yanks her pants down and lifts her up easily, her legs instinctively knotting around his back and her arms locking around his neck. He plunges his tongue into her mouth and drives them back into the wall of the elevator, pushing himself inside with the same intensity as their first time in Alaska. Her fingers pull at his hair, her teeth bite at his chin, the exposed skin of her chest is red from the rash of his stubble desperately scraping as he seeks purchase for anything he can press his mouth on. He plunges his hand down the front of her body, his fingers greedy for her swollen center, eager for them both to achieve the release they painfully need. When she erupts in a series of convulsions around him he feels overjoyed and victorious. He’s escaped death and yet this is his greatest accomplishment. He can do these things to this amazing creature. He gets to know this side of Dana Scully, to feel her unravel in his arms and open up fully. How did he ever get so lucky?  
  
They are out of jobs, navigating vaults of hidden files and secrets, and Melissa Scully becomes another bit of collateral damage to add to the tally, taking the bullet that was meant for Scully. Skinner offers to make a deal with the dark forces against them, offering the digital tape in return for their reinstatement and safety. Mulder is disgusted with the thought of negotiating with the enemy, prepared to fight until the end for his answers, but Scully’s desperation brings him back into focus.  
  
“Look, I want exactly what you want. But I need to see my sister.”  
  
That stops him in his tracks. He knows this feeling. He can’t keep this from her. He can’t put his answers ahead of her chance to see her sister.  
  
He gives in, but in the end, it’s all too late. Melissa joins the catalog of victims to his crusade and Scully can barely contain the rage in her chest for all that’s been lost.  
  
“I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.”  
  
She clutches onto him in pain and shared sadness. His father and her sister, both executed by puppets of the same consortium that holds the veil over their eyes, keeping them in a frenzied rat race for answers. At what cost will they continue on this path?  
  
The outrage makes her blood boil, blisters her insides. She jumps up from her chair beside Melissa’s cold and abandoned hospital bed, startling Mulder to lean back on his heels where he rests on the floor.  
  
“All the things they’ve taken! The things they’ve done to me! Those pieces of shit think they can get away with it... that they can violate. Take. Murder. And there are no consequences. No justice whatsoever.”  
  
She’s seething, spitting her words. He feels her desperation but also feels her putting the walls back up, once again closing him out.  
  
“That’s why we have to keep looking. To show them that we aren’t going to just give up. They can’t take away those we love and expect us to just bow our heads in acceptance. I understand how you’re feeling, Scully-”  
  
“You DON’T know what it’s like! To be taken against your will. To have things done to you that you have no memory of!”  
  
She’s angry, he knows this. Her sister isn’t even 4 hours cold and she’s still in shock. But he feels like a selfish bastard because all he can think is that she isn’t the only one that suffered from her abduction. How can she not know that he was ready to give his own life over when she was gone? He was ready to murder whoever was responsible before letting the earth swallow him whole - or take his own pathetic life if it didn’t.  
  
He’s not sure where it comes from. The words are out before he has a chance to consider them. “Were you ever going to tell me?”  
  
She stops breathing. The silence bleeds in the air as her face meet his in a question before she remembers to inhale again.  
  
Her eyes are burning into his, trying to read the meaning into his question, but he can tell by the way her lip twitches that she knows exactly what he is referring to. “I know about the test.”  
  
He is tired of living with secrets hanging over their relationship. Like any good secret, he knew this one would eventually worm its way into the light.  
  
She is stunned, searching for a response. “Why are you just now bringing this up? Do you honestly think _this_ is the time?”  
  
He knows it isn’t. But if he doesn’t say it now, he doesn’t know if he ever will.  
  
“It’s my loss, too, you know.” He looks down. “I mean, if you were.” _Pregnant._ “It would have been a loss for both of us.”  
  
She drops her eyes. “There was nothing to tell. I hadn’t taken the test.”  
  
“But you suspected you were carrying our child and you never said anything! I would’ve - I could have-” _Saved you. Never let either of you out of my sight._ He bites his lip. “You should have told me.” _I never would have given you that implant and involved you in the case. I should have kept you as far away from this darkness as possible._  
  
“I couldn't. What we had was new and… we hadn’t really established what we were to each other then. I didn’t know how you would take the news. I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

“Scully, it wouldn’t be an obligation. Nothing with you is ever an obligation. Don’t you know that by now? Jesus-”

She wraps her arms around herself and stares at the empty bed to avoid his face.

He follows her gaze to the bed. If he hadn’t led her on a wild goose chase through that mountain vault, she could have been here to hold her sister’s hand. To say goodbye. “It’s all my fault. All of this is. What was done to you, what they did to Melissa. You would be better off not knowing me.”

She lifts her eyes to his, they are hollow and glassed over in pain. She opens her mouth to speak, but then averts her eyes and presses her lips back together. It’s all the answer he needs.

Without another word, she turns and exits the room, leaving him alone with his heart joining his knees against the cold linoleum of the floor.

 


End file.
